Today in Linus Pauling: March 19

Wrote these Manuscripts:Vitamin C and the Common Cold: An Up-To-Date Discussion, March 19, 1975.

Chemotherapy, March 19, 1987.

Gave these Speeches:Melting Points, Boiling Points, Crystal Energy, Fifth Lecture, Seminar on the Properties of Monatomic Atoms and Ions, University of California, Berkeley, March 19, 1929.

Perturbation Theory — Method of Variation of Constants, Second Lecture, Berkeley Lectures, Second Series — Introduction to Quantum Mechanics of Aperiodic Processes, University of California, Berkeley, March 19, 1930.

Structure and Specificity, Eli Lilly and Company, No Location, March 19, 1946.

The Third Party Movement in the United States, The English Speaking Union, Oxford University, England, March 19, 1948.

Disarm or Die!, Toronto Committee for Disarmament, Toronto, Canada, March 19, 1961; Causes of Aging and Death, University of Toronto, March 20, 1961.

Science and the Future of Humanity, American Friends Service Committee, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, March 19, 1963.

The Health and Welfare of Children: Future Directions, Sixth Annual Conference of the Quebec Association for Children with Learning Disabilities, Montreal, Canada, March 19, 1981.

Life magazine has recently published a series of never-before-seen photographs that document Albert Einstein’s environs on the day that he died. Taken by photographer Ralph Morse, the images and captions presented on the Life website are interesting for any number of reasons. (See, for instance, this canny meditation on the value of a bottle of scotch.) In particular, the image above, which shows Einstein’s Princeton University office in its final state, piqued our interests and got us to thinking about Linus Pauling’s work areas.

Mock-up of the Pauling office, OSU Special Collections.

As reconstructed in the permanent display adjacent to the Special Collections reading room, one notices a few similarities between the two set-ups, the desk and chalkboard chief among them. Both men also likely shared a fondness for slide rules, though we don’t know if Einstein made as prolific use of Dictaphones as did Pauling. One important difference: Pauling, an ardent anti-smoker, would never have included a pipe or an ashtray among his office possessions, as did Einstein.

The display also gives the impression that Pauling was a neat and tidy sort, apparently unlike his colleague and friend Professor Einstein. This impression is rather misleading. Though a very precise thinker, an organized researcher and a superb administrator, Pauling didn’t exactly keep his work space in pristine condition. Note, for example, the large stacks of papers in this 1957 photo of Pauling in his office at Caltech’s Crellin Laboratory. (click to enlarge)

Pauling in his office at the Crellin Laboratory, Caltech, 1957. Photo by Phil Stern.

The situation hadn’t improved much by 1977, though in his defense, Pauling was receiving huge volumes of mail by this time.

Pauling in his Portola Valley office, 1977.

Finally, here’s a shot from 1991, taken at the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine. It is a good approximation of what Pauling’s office probably looked like at the time of his death, some three and a half years later.

Linus Pauling and a guest in his office at the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine, 1991.

For those who might be interested, the contents of Pauling’s desk contemporary to the end of his tenure at Caltech have been cataloged into box 1.034 of the Pauling Biographical series.

3 Responses

Not many, unfortunately. We do know from a label on its top that the model, which is of the alpha-helix, was given to Pauling as a gift during Pauling’s tenure at Stanford University (1969-1972). There is no indication of who built the model or gave it to Pauling.